Domestic Policy Council briefed about CNMI labor situation

The Northern Marianas Business Alliance Corp. was granted a meeting with President Donald Trump’s Domestic Policy Council and was able to brief the group on the current labor situation in the CNMI and how the scrapping of the CNMI-Only Transitional Worker program would be disastrous to the local economy.

It was NMBAC’s last meeting during its weeklong trip to Washington, D.C. and saw its chair Alex Sablan joining Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and CNMI Labor Secretary Vicky Benavente at the White House.

The DPC is responsible for drafting and executing the domestic policies of the President. The council works with every federal agency to ensure that Trump’s policy agenda is being carried out, government wide.

The DPC works closely with the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives to craft legislation that the Legislative and Executive branches of government can agree on.

Sablan provided the DPC an overview of the meetings that the NMBAC had with various senior officials and committees and the detailed reports presented.

“The members of the NMBAC provide 72 percent of the CNMI government revenue, but only employ around 25 percent of the CW-1 workforce,” he said.

“The NMBAC is here in Washington, D.C. to help provide a much needed voice to all small, medium, and large businesses that rely on foreign workers to keep their companies afloat,” he added.

DPC senior officials raised questions pertaining to what efforts the governor and the business community have been making toward the training and recruitment of U.S. citizens.

Over the past months, the CNMI business community and employers carried the burden of proof in showing U.S. Congress that the CNMI is doing its part to recruit, hire, and retain U.S. eligible workers.

Sablan voiced out the millions of dollars that the business community and CNMI government have spent over the past three years in off-island recruitment and training programs that have been funded by various government and private sector sources to bring more U.S. citizens into the workforce.

DPC senior staff accepted the governor’s invitation to travel to the CNMI so they can have a first-hand knowledge and experience about the progress that the CNMI has made over the past years.

NMBAC believes that this invitation would allow DPC to better understand the need for a long term-solution to the CNMI’s workforce challenges.